CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS OF GREAT BRITAIN 26 page

there's no doubt about that either. He knows the business.... But we can

talk it over later...."

"Hurrah!" cried Razumihin. "Now, stay, there's a flat here in this

house, belonging to the same owner. It's a special flat apart, not

communicating with these lodgings. It's furnished, rent moderate,

three rooms. Suppose you take them to begin with. I'll pawn your watch

to-morrow and bring you the money, and everything can be arranged then.

You can all three live together, and Rodya will be with you. But where

are you off to, Rodya?"

"What, Rodya, you are going already?" Pulcheria Alexandrovna asked in

dismay.

"At such a minute?" cried Razumihin.

Dounia looked at her brother with incredulous wonder. He held his cap in

his hand, he was preparing to leave them.

"One would think you were burying me or saying good-bye for ever," he

said somewhat oddly. He attempted to smile, but it did not turn out a

smile. "But who knows, perhaps it is the last time we shall see each

other..." he let slip accidentally. It was what he was thinking, and it

somehow was uttered aloud.

"What is the matter with you?" cried his mother.

"Where are you going, Rodya?" asked Dounia rather strangely.

"Oh, I'm quite obliged to..." he answered vaguely, as though hesitating

what he would say. But there was a look of sharp determination in his

white face.

"I meant to say... as I was coming here... I meant to tell you, mother,

and you, Dounia, that it would be better for us to part for a time. I

feel ill, I am not at peace.... I will come afterwards, I will come of

myself... when it's possible. I remember you and love you.... Leave me,

leave me alone. I decided this even before... I'm absolutely resolved on

it. Whatever may come to me, whether I come to ruin or not, I want to be

alone. Forget me altogether, it's better. Don't inquire about me. When

I can, I'll come of myself or... I'll send for you. Perhaps it will all

come back, but now if you love me, give me up... else I shall begin to

hate you, I feel it.... Good-bye!"

"Good God!" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. Both his mother and his sister

were terribly alarmed. Razumihin was also.

"Rodya, Rodya, be reconciled with us! Let us be as before!" cried his

poor mother.

He turned slowly to the door and slowly went out of the room. Dounia

overtook him.

"Brother, what are you doing to mother?" she whispered, her eyes

flashing with indignation.

He looked dully at her.

"No matter, I shall come.... I'm coming," he muttered in an undertone,

as though not fully conscious of what he was saying, and he went out of

the room.

"Wicked, heartless egoist!" cried Dounia.

"He is insane, but not heartless. He is mad! Don't you see it? You're

heartless after that!" Razumihin whispered in her ear, squeezing

her hand tightly. "I shall be back directly," he shouted to the

horror-stricken mother, and he ran out of the room.

Raskolnikov was waiting for him at the end of the passage.

"I knew you would run after me," he said. "Go back to them--be with

them... be with them to-morrow and always.... I... perhaps I shall

come... if I can. Good-bye."

And without holding out his hand he walked away.

"But where are you going? What are you doing? What's the matter with

you? How can you go on like this?" Razumihin muttered, at his wits' end.

Raskolnikov stopped once more.

"Once for all, never ask me about anything. I have nothing to tell you.

Don't come to see me. Maybe I'll come here.... Leave me, but _don't

leave_ them. Do you understand me?"

It was dark in the corridor, they were standing near the lamp. For a

minute they were looking at one another in silence. Razumihin remembered

that minute all his life. Raskolnikov's burning and intent eyes

grew more penetrating every moment, piercing into his soul, into his

consciousness. Suddenly Razumihin started. Something strange, as it

were, passed between them.... Some idea, some hint, as it were, slipped,

something awful, hideous, and suddenly understood on both sides....

Razumihin turned pale.

"Do you understand now?" said Raskolnikov, his face twitching nervously.

"Go back, go to them," he said suddenly, and turning quickly, he went

out of the house.

I will not attempt to describe how Razumihin went back to the ladies,

how he soothed them, how he protested that Rodya needed rest in his

illness, protested that Rodya was sure to come, that he would come every

day, that he was very, very much upset, that he must not be irritated,

that he, Razumihin, would watch over him, would get him a doctor, the

best doctor, a consultation.... In fact from that evening Razumihin took

his place with them as a son and a brother.

CHAPTER IV

Raskolnikov went straight to the house on the canal bank where Sonia

lived. It was an old green house of three storeys. He found the

porter and obtained from him vague directions as to the whereabouts of

Kapernaumov, the tailor. Having found in the corner of the courtyard

the entrance to the dark and narrow staircase, he mounted to the second

floor and came out into a gallery that ran round the whole second storey

over the yard. While he was wandering in the darkness, uncertain where

to turn for Kapernaumov's door, a door opened three paces from him; he

mechanically took hold of it.

"Who is there?" a woman's voice asked uneasily.

"It's I... come to see you," answered Raskolnikov and he walked into the

tiny entry.

On a broken chair stood a candle in a battered copper candlestick.

"It's you! Good heavens!" cried Sonia weakly, and she stood rooted to

the spot.

"Which is your room? This way?" and Raskolnikov, trying not to look at

her, hastened in.

A minute later Sonia, too, came in with the candle, set down the

candlestick and, completely disconcerted, stood before him inexpressibly

agitated and apparently frightened by his unexpected visit. The colour

rushed suddenly to her pale face and tears came into her eyes... She

felt sick and ashamed and happy, too.... Raskolnikov turned away quickly

and sat on a chair by the table. He scanned the room in a rapid glance.

It was a large but exceedingly low-pitched room, the only one let by the

Kapernaumovs, to whose rooms a closed door led in the wall on the left.

In the opposite side on the right hand wall was another door, always

kept locked. That led to the next flat, which formed a separate lodging.

Sonia's room looked like a barn; it was a very irregular quadrangle and

this gave it a grotesque appearance. A wall with three windows looking

out on to the canal ran aslant so that one corner formed a very acute

angle, and it was difficult to see in it without very strong light.

The other corner was disproportionately obtuse. There was scarcely any

furniture in the big room: in the corner on the right was a bedstead,

beside it, nearest the door, a chair. A plain, deal table covered by a

blue cloth stood against the same wall, close to the door into the other

flat. Two rush-bottom chairs stood by the table. On the opposite

wall near the acute angle stood a small plain wooden chest of drawers

looking, as it were, lost in a desert. That was all there was in the

room. The yellow, scratched and shabby wall-paper was black in the

corners. It must have been damp and full of fumes in the winter. There

was every sign of poverty; even the bedstead had no curtain.

Sonia looked in silence at her visitor, who was so attentively and

unceremoniously scrutinising her room, and even began at last to tremble

with terror, as though she was standing before her judge and the arbiter

of her destinies.

"I am late.... It's eleven, isn't it?" he asked, still not lifting his

eyes.

"Yes," muttered Sonia, "oh yes, it is," she added, hastily, as though in

that lay her means of escape. "My landlady's clock has just struck... I

heard it myself...."

"I've come to you for the last time," Raskolnikov went on gloomily,

although this was the first time. "I may perhaps not see you again..."

"Are you... going away?"

"I don't know... to-morrow...."

"Then you are not coming to Katerina Ivanovna to-morrow?" Sonia's voice

shook.

"I don't know. I shall know to-morrow morning.... Never mind that: I've

come to say one word...."

He raised his brooding eyes to her and suddenly noticed that he was

sitting down while she was all the while standing before him.

"Why are you standing? Sit down," he said in a changed voice, gentle and

friendly.

She sat down. He looked kindly and almost compassionately at her.

"How thin you are! What a hand! Quite transparent, like a dead hand."

He took her hand. Sonia smiled faintly.

"I have always been like that," she said.

"Even when you lived at home?"

"Yes."

"Of course, you were," he added abruptly and the expression of his face

and the sound of his voice changed again suddenly.

He looked round him once more.

"You rent this room from the Kapernaumovs?"

"Yes...."

"They live there, through that door?"

"Yes.... They have another room like this."

"All in one room?"

"Yes."

"I should be afraid in your room at night," he observed gloomily.

"They are very good people, very kind," answered Sonia, who still seemed

bewildered, "and all the furniture, everything... everything is theirs.

And they are very kind and the children, too, often come to see me."

"They all stammer, don't they?"

"Yes.... He stammers and he's lame. And his wife, too.... It's not

exactly that she stammers, but she can't speak plainly. She is a very

kind woman. And he used to be a house serf. And there are seven

children... and it's only the eldest one that stammers and the others

are simply ill... but they don't stammer.... But where did you hear

about them?" she added with some surprise.

"Your father told me, then. He told me all about you.... And how you

went out at six o'clock and came back at nine and how Katerina Ivanovna

knelt down by your bed."

Sonia was confused.

"I fancied I saw him to-day," she whispered hesitatingly.

"Whom?"

"Father. I was walking in the street, out there at the corner, about ten

o'clock and he seemed to be walking in front. It looked just like him. I

wanted to go to Katerina Ivanovna...."

"You were walking in the streets?"

"Yes," Sonia whispered abruptly, again overcome with confusion and

looking down.

"Katerina Ivanovna used to beat you, I dare say?"

"Oh no, what are you saying? No!" Sonia looked at him almost with

dismay.

"You love her, then?"

"Love her? Of course!" said Sonia with plaintive emphasis, and she

clasped her hands in distress. "Ah, you don't.... If you only knew!

You see, she is quite like a child.... Her mind is quite unhinged, you

see... from sorrow. And how clever she used to be... how generous... how

kind! Ah, you don't understand, you don't understand!"

Sonia said this as though in despair, wringing her hands in excitement

and distress. Her pale cheeks flushed, there was a look of anguish in

her eyes. It was clear that she was stirred to the very depths, that

she was longing to speak, to champion, to express something. A sort

of _insatiable_ compassion, if one may so express it, was reflected in

every feature of her face.

"Beat me! how can you? Good heavens, beat me! And if she did beat me,

what then? What of it? You know nothing, nothing about it.... She is so

unhappy... ah, how unhappy! And ill.... She is seeking righteousness,

she is pure. She has such faith that there must be righteousness

everywhere and she expects it.... And if you were to torture her, she

wouldn't do wrong. She doesn't see that it's impossible for people to

be righteous and she is angry at it. Like a child, like a child. She is

good!"

"And what will happen to you?"

Sonia looked at him inquiringly.

"They are left on your hands, you see. They were all on your hands

before, though.... And your father came to you to beg for drink. Well,

how will it be now?"

"I don't know," Sonia articulated mournfully.

"Will they stay there?"

"I don't know.... They are in debt for the lodging, but the landlady,

I hear, said to-day that she wanted to get rid of them, and Katerina

Ivanovna says that she won't stay another minute."

"How is it she is so bold? She relies upon you?"

"Oh, no, don't talk like that.... We are one, we live like one." Sonia

was agitated again and even angry, as though a canary or some other

little bird were to be angry. "And what could she do? What, what could

she do?" she persisted, getting hot and excited. "And how she cried

to-day! Her mind is unhinged, haven't you noticed it? At one minute she

is worrying like a child that everything should be right to-morrow, the

lunch and all that.... Then she is wringing her hands, spitting blood,

weeping, and all at once she will begin knocking her head against the

wall, in despair. Then she will be comforted again. She builds all her

hopes on you; she says that you will help her now and that she will

borrow a little money somewhere and go to her native town with me and

set up a boarding school for the daughters of gentlemen and take me to

superintend it, and we will begin a new splendid life. And she kisses

and hugs me, comforts me, and you know she has such faith, such faith in

her fancies! One can't contradict her. And all the day long she has been

washing, cleaning, mending. She dragged the wash tub into the room with

her feeble hands and sank on the bed, gasping for breath. We went this

morning to the shops to buy shoes for Polenka and Lida for theirs are

quite worn out. Only the money we'd reckoned wasn't enough, not nearly

enough. And she picked out such dear little boots, for she has taste,

you don't know. And there in the shop she burst out crying before the

shopmen because she hadn't enough.... Ah, it was sad to see her...."

"Well, after that I can understand your living like this," Raskolnikov

said with a bitter smile.

"And aren't you sorry for them? Aren't you sorry?" Sonia flew at him

again. "Why, I know, you gave your last penny yourself, though you'd

seen nothing of it, and if you'd seen everything, oh dear! And how

often, how often I've brought her to tears! Only last week! Yes, I! Only

a week before his death. I was cruel! And how often I've done it! Ah,

I've been wretched at the thought of it all day!"

Sonia wrung her hands as she spoke at the pain of remembering it.

"You were cruel?"

"Yes, I--I. I went to see them," she went on, weeping, "and father said,

'read me something, Sonia, my head aches, read to me, here's a book.' He

had a book he had got from Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, he lives

there, he always used to get hold of such funny books. And I said, 'I

can't stay,' as I didn't want to read, and I'd gone in chiefly to show

Katerina Ivanovna some collars. Lizaveta, the pedlar, sold me some

collars and cuffs cheap, pretty, new, embroidered ones. Katerina

Ivanovna liked them very much; she put them on and looked at herself

in the glass and was delighted with them. 'Make me a present of them,

Sonia,' she said, 'please do.' '_Please do_,' she said, she wanted them

so much. And when could she wear them? They just reminded her of her old

happy days. She looked at herself in the glass, admired herself, and she

has no clothes at all, no things of her own, hasn't had all these years!

And she never asks anyone for anything; she is proud, she'd sooner give

away everything. And these she asked for, she liked them so much. And I

was sorry to give them. 'What use are they to you, Katerina Ivanovna?' I

said. I spoke like that to her, I ought not to have said that! She gave

me such a look. And she was so grieved, so grieved at my refusing her.

And it was so sad to see.... And she was not grieved for the collars,

but for my refusing, I saw that. Ah, if only I could bring it all back,

change it, take back those words! Ah, if I... but it's nothing to you!"

"Did you know Lizaveta, the pedlar?"

"Yes.... Did you know her?" Sonia asked with some surprise.

"Katerina Ivanovna is in consumption, rapid consumption; she will soon

die," said Raskolnikov after a pause, without answering her question.

"Oh, no, no, no!"

And Sonia unconsciously clutched both his hands, as though imploring

that she should not.

"But it will be better if she does die."

"No, not better, not at all better!" Sonia unconsciously repeated in

dismay.

"And the children? What can you do except take them to live with you?"

"Oh, I don't know," cried Sonia, almost in despair, and she put her

hands to her head.

It was evident that that idea had very often occurred to her before and

he had only roused it again.

"And, what, if even now, while Katerina Ivanovna is alive, you get ill

and are taken to the hospital, what will happen then?" he persisted

pitilessly.

"How can you? That cannot be!"

And Sonia's face worked with awful terror.

"Cannot be?" Raskolnikov went on with a harsh smile. "You are not

insured against it, are you? What will happen to them then? They will

be in the street, all of them, she will cough and beg and knock her head

against some wall, as she did to-day, and the children will cry....

Then she will fall down, be taken to the police station and to the

hospital, she will die, and the children..."

"Oh, no.... God will not let it be!" broke at last from Sonia's

overburdened bosom.

She listened, looking imploringly at him, clasping her hands in dumb

entreaty, as though it all depended upon him.

Raskolnikov got up and began to walk about the room. A minute passed.

Sonia was standing with her hands and her head hanging in terrible

dejection.

"And can't you save? Put by for a rainy day?" he asked, stopping

suddenly before her.

"No," whispered Sonia.

"Of course not. Have you tried?" he added almost ironically.

"Yes."

"And it didn't come off! Of course not! No need to ask."

And again he paced the room. Another minute passed.

"You don't get money every day?"

Sonia was more confused than ever and colour rushed into her face again.

"No," she whispered with a painful effort.

"It will be the same with Polenka, no doubt," he said suddenly.

"No, no! It can't be, no!" Sonia cried aloud in desperation, as though

she had been stabbed. "God would not allow anything so awful!"

"He lets others come to it."

"No, no! God will protect her, God!" she repeated beside herself.

"But, perhaps, there is no God at all," Raskolnikov answered with a sort

of malignance, laughed and looked at her.

Sonia's face suddenly changed; a tremor passed over it. She looked at

him with unutterable reproach, tried to say something, but could not

speak and broke into bitter, bitter sobs, hiding her face in her hands.

"You say Katerina Ivanovna's mind is unhinged; your own mind is

unhinged," he said after a brief silence.

Five minutes passed. He still paced up and down the room in silence, not

looking at her. At last he went up to her; his eyes glittered. He put

his two hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her tearful

face. His eyes were hard, feverish and piercing, his lips were

twitching. All at once he bent down quickly and dropping to the

ground, kissed her foot. Sonia drew back from him as from a madman. And

certainly he looked like a madman.

"What are you doing to me?" she muttered, turning pale, and a sudden

anguish clutched at her heart.

He stood up at once.

"I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of

humanity," he said wildly and walked away to the window. "Listen," he

added, turning to her a minute later. "I said just now to an insolent

man that he was not worth your little finger... and that I did my sister

honour making her sit beside you."

"Ach, you said that to them! And in her presence?" cried Sonia,

frightened. "Sit down with me! An honour! Why, I'm... dishonourable....

Ah, why did you say that?"

"It was not because of your dishonour and your sin I said that of you,

but because of your great suffering. But you are a great sinner, that's

true," he added almost solemnly, "and your worst sin is that you have

destroyed and betrayed yourself _for nothing_. Isn't that fearful? Isn't

it fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at

the same time you know yourself (you've only to open your eyes) that you

are not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything? Tell me,"

he went on almost in a frenzy, "how this shame and degradation can exist

in you side by side with other, opposite, holy feelings? It would be

better, a thousand times better and wiser to leap into the water and end

it all!"

"But what would become of them?" Sonia asked faintly, gazing at him with

eyes of anguish, but not seeming surprised at his suggestion.

Raskolnikov looked strangely at her. He read it all in her face; so she

must have had that thought already, perhaps many times, and earnestly

she had thought out in her despair how to end it and so earnestly, that

now she scarcely wondered at his suggestion. She had not even noticed

the cruelty of his words. (The significance of his reproaches and his

peculiar attitude to her shame she had, of course, not noticed either,

and that, too, was clear to him.) But he saw how monstrously the thought

of her disgraceful, shameful position was torturing her and had long

tortured her. "What, what," he thought, "could hitherto have hindered

her from putting an end to it?" Only then he realised what those poor

little orphan children and that pitiful half-crazy Katerina Ivanovna,

knocking her head against the wall in her consumption, meant for Sonia.

But, nevertheless, it was clear to him again that with her character and

the amount of education she had after all received, she could not in any

case remain so. He was still confronted by the question, how could she

have remained so long in that position without going out of her mind,

since she could not bring herself to jump into the water? Of course he

knew that Sonia's position was an exceptional case, though unhappily not

unique and not infrequent, indeed; but that very exceptionalness, her

tinge of education, her previous life might, one would have thought,

have killed her at the first step on that revolting path. What held her

up--surely not depravity? All that infamy had obviously only touched

her mechanically, not one drop of real depravity had penetrated to her

heart; he saw that. He saw through her as she stood before him....

"There are three ways before her," he thought, "the canal, the madhouse,

or... at last to sink into depravity which obscures the mind and turns

the heart to stone."

The last idea was the most revolting, but he was a sceptic, he was

young, abstract, and therefore cruel, and so he could not help believing

that the last end was the most likely.

"But can that be true?" he cried to himself. "Can that creature who has

still preserved the purity of her spirit be consciously drawn at last

into that sink of filth and iniquity? Can the process already have

begun? Can it be that she has only been able to bear it till now,

because vice has begun to be less loathsome to her? No, no, that cannot

be!" he cried, as Sonia had just before. "No, what has kept her from the

canal till now is the idea of sin and they, the children.... And if she

has not gone out of her mind... but who says she has not gone out of her

mind? Is she in her senses? Can one talk, can one reason as she does?

How can she sit on the edge of the abyss of loathsomeness into which she

is slipping and refuse to listen when she is told of danger? Does she

expect a miracle? No doubt she does. Doesn't that all mean madness?"

He stayed obstinately at that thought. He liked that explanation indeed

better than any other. He began looking more intently at her.

"So you pray to God a great deal, Sonia?" he asked her.

Sonia did not speak; he stood beside her waiting for an answer.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 625